Category Archives: academic libraries
People Who Can and Should Influence Change in Libraries
As library systems struggle with finding their relevance within the continuously and rapidly changing digital world, there are a number of things which we (library staff) all need to keep in mind. The first point is probably the hardest thing … Continue reading
Filed under academic libraries, public libraries, The Profession
Shifting the Role of Academic Libraries and Librarians?
Much like public libraries, academic libraries have traditionally been viewed as warehouses of information. As budgets continue to become more restrained within the current political environment, and technological ‘advances’ make community members feel that information is more publicly accessible, it is vital … Continue reading
Filed under academic libraries, community development, public libraries
How academic libraries annoy academics
Here’s a story I’m telling because I think libraries need more allies in the academy. As a librarian-slash-researcher-slash-professor I have these weird insider/outsider (or emic/etic) experiences with academic libraries from time to time. In these experiences (here’s one from last … Continue reading
Filed under academic libraries, advocacy, funding, technology, The Profession
Toughening ourselves up as librarian-researchers: Follow up Post #1
I wasn’t aware that I posted my bit about disappointment with LIS conference research presentations smack dab in between the EBLIP6 conference and the launch of the UK-based Developing Research Excellence and Methods (DREaM) project. Serendipity at it’s finest! Thanks … Continue reading
Filed under academic libraries, LIS education, research, The Profession
Conference Season 2011: Librarianship Researchers, we need to toughen up
As a research-embedded health librarian, I often go to non-LIS-type conferences that are aimed at health researchers. While I really like my librarian colleagues, this spring I’ve been thinking about the juxtoposition of how we present research in LIS fora versus health fora.
To my fellow Health Librarianship Researchers: We need to toughen up.
(Frankly, this should probably be addressed to all librarianship researchers, not just those in health, but health is my current niche and where my illustrative examples come from today)
1) Stand up for your methods!
2) Policy-based evidence: We need to recognize and avoid it
If we’re going to do research and position ourselves as reseach experts (or even just research-competent), we need to sharpen our chops.
Filed under academic libraries, research, The Profession
Evaluation, assessment, research & impact
Around the same time I noticed that a number of academic libraries were posting for new (or newish) “assessment librarians,” I went to a cool lecture by Dr. Eliza Dresang about a project teaming LIS researchers with children’s librarians to … Continue reading
The metered Internet threat to innovation & access to information
Remember the early days of mass public access to the world wide web? Back when AOL was king, noisy dial-up modems were par for the course and having any graphics on a webpage was super-fancy? Remember in 1993 or so, … Continue reading
Library Instruction in my non-LIS Classes
This post is, in part, a follow up to my Embarrassing confessional: I am the faculty we complain about post of about 18 months ago, in which I tried to analyze my professor-job from the perspective of my librarian-job. In that … Continue reading
Filed under academic libraries, The Profession
Academic librarians and research: a response
Before you read this post, go here and read Mark Rabnett’s blog post, ““For academic librarians what’s hard to reach is time for research.” I started leaving a comment there, but soon realised that my comment was likely to challenge the … Continue reading
Filed under academic libraries, Blogroll, Other blogs, publishing, The Profession
Conflating OA with other issues we like
At the 2nd International Public Knowledge Project Conference‘s CLA pre-conference, a bunch of librarians and a few assorted others got together to talk about open access (OA). One thing I kept finding myself coming back to is something I’ve been … Continue reading
Filed under academic libraries, IP, OA, publishing
